Healthcare reform is underway and conservatives are seeking to "repeal and replace" the affordable care act in a few weeks time. At the present, ACA has given 20 million Americans health insurance and garnered the support of the industrial medical complex. Conservatives will tout that ACA is one step too close to full blown Marxist socialism and the end to freedoms, liberty, and the American way of life. They claim that the free market is a perfect system for healthcare as it will drive competition and thus ensure that the best and cheapest providers are the ones that prosper.
The problem with treating healthcare like a business is it isn't one. Sure, some hospitals are for profit, but it's not like a person goes on yelp after they get shot on 6th street, weighing the options of which hospital is going to give the best gun shot wound care. You go to where the ambulance takes you: not a free market choice. Compound this fact with the mysterious nature of medical pricing, physical location requirements, and the oligarchic nature of all things medical and you start to realize this is not an issue of free market vs socialism, rather profit vs less profit.
I do not understand how one can think that making a profit on sick, injured, and dying people is morally okay. We are all humans, and regardless of anything, we need to take care of each other. When everyone is doing better, then everyone is doing better. Less emergency care, more preventative care, and having everyone contribute their fair share to the health of our country is the solution to this problem.
Feel free to read the original piece here.
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